Monday, May 21, 2007

Bulgarian Blow to Dave's small Euro tent

Cast you mind back a few short months ago, indeed all the way back to the 6th March. Dave 'the boy' Cameron was on the stump in Brussels proclaiming that his new organisation would provide the leadership needed to reform the EU. How we tittered.One of the big fish that he pulled out of his hat was Petar Stoyanov, the former President of Bulgaria. This chap is the leader of the UDF (or SDS) which was joining Dave's Movement for European Reform.

The pity is that having failed to reach the 5.6% minimal limit for representation the party will have no MEPs. So the revolution will have to wait a little longer it seems.

On a lighter note the methods used by local news organisations to break the 'No Exit Poll' rules in Bulgaria were innovative indeed, AFP Reports,

Publishing exit polls is illegal in Bulgaria during voting, but the country's media have found ingenious methods to get around the ban, including nursery rhymes, flower sales and wind speeds.As voting took place in Bulgaria's first ever European elections, the BGNES news agency ran a weather forecast saying it was 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) -- but only near the ruling Socialist Party headquarters.To those in the know the forecasts meant that Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev's Socialist party was on track to win six out of the 18 European Parliament seats up for grabs.Less than a kilometer (mile) away, at the main buildings of the newly-formed populist party GERB of Sofia mayor Boiko Borisov, it was much colder with only 19 degrees, indicating that GERB was polling at four seats.Winds, meanwhile, were blowing at 12 metres per second in Bulgaria at 1:00 pm (1000 GMT), BGNES said, indicating 12 percent turnout.The Focus news agency also published information from five polling agencies under cover of a ranking of movies, songs, books, flowers and even children's tales.Thus, "Red Riding Hood", referring to the Socialists, was beating the Bulgarian folk-tale "The Brave fellow", attributed to the GERB party of the charismatic former crime-buster Borisov.The rose, a socialist symbol, was selling better than the gaudi gerbera, alluding to GERB. Tobacco, denoting the Turkish minority party, was polling third, Focus said.The independent Darik radio also ran exit poll results by two institutes under cover of a song contest in which listeners "voted" by phone or online for a song attributed to each candidate.Darik radio said that the UB40 song "Red, red wine" matched with front-running Socialists was more popular than "Fire" by German band Scooter, attributed to GERB.